


Calculus Lobster

by TrexReach100



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Graphic Depiction of Suicide, M/M, dex freaks out, low key like, nursey is dramatic, tw:mentions of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 16:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12258213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrexReach100/pseuds/TrexReach100
Summary: Based off the prompt: “I would rather die than take this exam.” "Same."





	Calculus Lobster

**Author's Note:**

> **Trigger warning for a graphic mention of suicide.**

“I would rather die than take this exam.” A cloud of steam curls over his fingers as Nursey releases an anxious exhale across the top of his coffee.

“Same.” Dex sighs leaning against the wall.  The cold brick makes him shiver but he doesn’t move because from this angle he has the perfect view of Nursey’s profile.  He doesn’t waste those moments.  Now that they live together he doesn’t get as many chances to subtly stare at his team mate when everyone is so busy watching them for sparks that would ignite arguments.  It doesn’t matter that they haven’t argued once since moving in together, everyone’s still finding it hard to move past the time their relationship was more fractious than friendly.  They don’t fight anymore but in place of barbed words and tussles on the ground there are awkward silences and bitten back words.  Dex preferred when they shouted at one another, at least he knew where he stood then.  Now Nursey’s silences could mean anything.

“How would you do it?”

Dex’s eyes narrow but he tries to ignore the part that wakes up to worry when Nursey talks like this.  “Die?”

“Yeah.” Nursey turns to him with a smile that looks good humoured to someone who’s never seen Derek lie in a dark room for a week and do nothing more than make unintelligible noises and sleep.  The sight of the outline of his body under those covers provoked memories of the grey lines under Dex’s mother’s eyes, the uneasy wringing of her hands and the way she’d order the boys to stay downstairs while she went to check on her sister upstairs.  Being the obedient six year old he was Dex crawled up the stairs, sneaking along the landing to where he could hear her low voice pleading with a formless lump on the bed.

_“Please Celia.  You have to get up.  The kids need to go to school.”_

The next time Dex saw her she was fine.  At the family barbecue Celia’s face crinkled with laughter, her body light with happiness as she cradled her babies close and showered their faces in kisses.

A month later she slit her wrists in the bathtub.  Of course Dex only learned about this particular detail later on when his brother was trying to make him cry.  His mother tanned his brothers hide so that Dex wouldn’t be the only one in tears.

So when Nursey asks him to come up with ways to end what so far has been a pretty alright trip on this mortal plane he doesn’t answer right away.  He takes a moment to boldly inspect Nursey’s face, to search for the warning signs he missed before.

“I dunno.” He shrugs because that feels like the safest way.  Let Nursey think he has no imagination or appetite for the morbid or isn’t interested in talking.  Let him think whatever he wants just don’t let him contemplate death.

Nursey cants his head curiously, “You’ve never thought about it?”

“No.”

“Never?” He asks disbelievingly.

“No.”

“Never?” Dex shoots him a look, “So you’ve never had that moment where you’re standing waiting for the train and you’re looking at the tracks below and a little voice whispers _“jump!”_ or you look at the platform opposite and think _“Yeah I could make that”_?”

Okay so Dex has had both those moments but there’s a difference between overestimating your stride and picturing how you’d take your own life so he says “No.” again.

“Why’d you say same then?”

“Huh?” he frowns.

Nursey rolls his eyes because he thinks Dex is being deliberately obtuse.  “When I said I’d rather die than take this exam you said ‘same’.  Why did you say same if you’ve never thought about it.”

“I dunno.” Dex frowns, “I was following your dramatic theme.”

Nursey makes a harrumph sound.  Then just before Dex thinks he’s going to drop it by pouting Nursey says, “But like if you had to choose.”

Unbidden an exasperated groan pushes it’s way free, “God Derek I don’t know.”

“You _must_ have thought about it at least once.” He dogs.

“I haven’t!”

Nursey turns to him, his eyes alight with determination, ready to dig in.  Dex prefers this animated version of Derek to the prone dark lump underneath the covers but he also doesn’t.  “Then gun to your head, if you had to choose, how would you do it?”

“Gun to my head?”

“Uhuh.”

“The gun.”

“What?”

“I’d choose the gun.”

Nursey scoffs in frustration, “You can’t choose the gun.”

“Why not?” Dex forces his smile of amusement down into a frown of confusion.

“Because that’s just your motivator.  You have to do it yourself.”

“I just said same to dying I never said to doing it myself.”

“Urgh! But you have to do it yourself.” Nursey insists.

“Says who?”

“The gun to your head!”

“So if I don’t the gun to my head shoots me?”

Nursey opens his mouth then shuts it abruptly, “…yeah…” he mumbles.

Dex grins smug, “Then the gun.  Because either way I’m going to die and I don’t want to do it myself.”

“But that way you don’t get to choose.” Nursey tells him.

“Does it matter?” Dex chuckles.

“Of course it does!” Nursey argues with the kind of fervour that doesn’t suit a joke.

Dex stops when he realises Nursey isn’t smiling anymore.  Nursey turns away from him and takes a sip of his coffee.  Dex’s hand twitches to smooth it over his arm, to squeeze it in comfort or something.  “Derek.”

“I’d stick my head in the oven!” Nursey declares studiously avoiding eye contact with Dex.

Dex’s hand twitches harder.  “You can’t do that.” He commands then goes on to lamely explain, “Gas ovens aren’t made like that anymore.”

Nursey is quiet again.  “I’d jump off  tall building.”

“Most of the buildings here are like three storeys high.  You’d probably just break our back.  Anything higher and you probably wouldn’t be able to get up to the roof.” If Nursey is going to play this game of ‘what if’ Dex is going to play the game of ‘exactly why not’.

“Run out into the road.” He suggests.

“Broken bones at most.” Dex argues.

“Not if it was the highway.” Nursey counters.

“Someone would call the cops before you had the chance.”

Nursey makes a stumped sound then, “Drowning.”

“It’s really hard to drown yourself before self-preservation kicks in.  It’s why you can’t suffocate yourself.”

Nursey shoots him a look, “How do you know this?”

Dex shrugs enigmatically.

“Poison myself.”

“That’s a really brutal way to go.  You’d vomit blood, then suffocate or burn from the inside.” Dex makes himself shudder picturing the eruption of blood as Nursey spluttered across the table, “It would really hurt.”

“Pills.”

“Same as poison.” If they found him quick enough they could pump his stomach and all he’d have to worry about after that was a ruined liver or kidney failure for the rest of his life.

“Slit my wrists.”

Everything inside Dex goes cold.  He thinks of Auntie Celia and how her naked body submerged in bloody bathwater must have looked.  He imagines what it must have been like for his uncle to stare into her empty eyes as he called the ambulance already knowing it was too late.  She’d done it while everyone was at work and the boys were at school.  Dex thinks about how easy she made it for the coroner,  already unclothed with just two ugly lines to stitch up on her arms.

He can’t stop himself from picturing it except when he looks closer at the corpse in the tub it’s not female but male.  It’s not Celia, it’s Derek’s in the bath at the Haus.  Dex knows he’d wait until everyone left to do it.  Dex knows he’d be the one to call the ambulance while staring at the body.

“You wouldn’t let us find you like that would you?” He says in a thin strained voice.

Finally Nursey looks at him and Dex doesn’t see an ounce of amusement but neither does he see sadness.  Instead he sees apology.  He feels it when Derek curls his hand around Dex’s arm like Dex wanted to do to him.  He hears it when Nursey says, “No.  Sorry.”

Dex has never told a soul about what his aunt did but Nursey looks at him like he knows.  He looks like he recognises the way Dex’s face is all tight as he tries to temper his fear.  He squeezes Dex’s arm like he knows where that sort of panic originates from.  “I’m just being dramatic.” He throws in a smile at it touches the sides better than before.  “You make killing myself sound like so much work I might as well just take this calculus test.”

Dex puts his hand over Nursey’s on his arm.  “Yeah I would.”

“What about you?”

Dex blinks uncomprehending.

“What test do you have?”

“Oh.  Oh! I don’t have a test.”

Nursey gapes at him, “Serious?”

“Yeeeeeah….” Dex twists his lips sheepishly.

“Poindexter!” Nursey whips his hand back.  “Why did you say same?!”

“I was commiserating!” Dex barks back.  A few students pause to see what all the fuss is about but all Dex can focus on is the indignation and annoyance on Nursey’s face and the way it makes him feel so much better than the careful fake nonchalance Nursey almost cemented onto his features earlier.

Nursey makes a grumbling noise of discontent and he sort of sounds like Marge Simpson when he does it which always makes Dex smile.  He waits until Nursey is done sipping more coffee before he gives him a playful shove with his bicep.  “You’ll do fine in the test bro.  Chowder’s been helping you study all week.”

“I’m gonna choke.  I should be revising right now not sitting on the step as you tell me all the ways I’ll fuck up topping myself.”

Dex would rather Nursey was revising too but telling him that killing himself isn’t that simple in the hopes of dissuading him from ever trying it is something Dex will happily be on hand to do as many times as Nursey needs it.

But he doesn’t say that because despite him and Chowder both knowing that some weeks Nursey can’t understand the necessity in getting up in the morning Nursey has never told them explicitly that he struggles.  So the two frogs watch and hedge and exchange worried texts behind his back.  They try to distract Nursey, to fill his mind with other things in the vain hopes of pushing the negative thoughts out.

“If you don’t know it by now you’ll never know it.”

Nursey groans, “That’s not very helpful.”

“It’s just calculus Derek.”

“It’s just calculus Derek.” Nursey mimics in a voice that does not sound like Dex’s at all.  “You’re just calculus.”

Nursey laughs so hard he almost drops his drink.


End file.
